CIA Western Hemisphere Division

The Western Hemisphere Division was the division of the CIA's clandestine service responsible for Latin America. It sat in the Directorate for Plans, later the Directorate of Operations. Its own historical staff wrote a classified history of its first two decades, "Western Hemisphere Division, 1946-1965," in December 1973; the study was released under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act.¹

J.C. King

J.C. King, formerly an executive of Johnson and Johnson and an officer of Nelson Rockefeller's Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, headed the division through the 1950s. On November 20, 1953, as chief of the division, he attended a meeting in New York on reducing oil supplies to Guatemala as pressure on President Jacobo Arbenz, and afterward met an oil company executive about cutting fuel to the country.² The overthrow of Arbenz in 1954, Operation PBSUCCESS, was carried out under King's overall authority, with Tracy Barnes as its coordinator in Washington.³

In August 1960, when Richard Bissell asked the Office of Security for assets for "a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action" against Fidel Castro, King was told of the plan and the JMWAVE station was not. The office's candidate, Robert Maheu, brought in Johnny Roselli, who brought in Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante.⁴ During the Bay of Pigs operation King was bypassed by Bissell; a memorandum of the Green Study Group of April 24, 1961, gives his title as "Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, Directorate for Plans" and records that the task force commander, Jacob Esterline, had taken his complaints to him, and that King passed them upward without effect.⁵

The division oversaw the operations against Cheddi Jagan's government in British Guiana, which ended in its fall in 1964. "Western Hemisphere was under long-time chief Joseph C. King," with Virginia Hall Goillot as the branch chief for British Guiana.⁶ In Peru its officers were unsympathetic to the reform movement of Haya de la Torre of APRA, and the station did nothing to deter the military coup of July 1962.⁷ King was among the recipients of Ambassador Lincoln Gordon's telegram of March 28, 1964, on the military movement against Joao Goulart in Brazil, with Dean Rusk, Thomas Mann, Robert McNamara, Maxwell Taylor, John McCone, and Desmond FitzGerald; the document identifies him as chief of the division "until March 1964."⁸

Chile, 1964

For the Chilean presidential election of 1964 an electoral committee was established in Washington, consisting of the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Thomas Mann; "the Western Hemisphere Division Chief of the CIA, Desmond Fitzgerald"; Ralph Dungan and McGeorge Bundy from the White House; and "the Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division Branch Four, the branch that has jurisdiction over Chile." The agency "spent three million dollars in an effort to influence the outcome of the 1964 Chilean presidential elections," which were won by Eduardo Frei.⁹

Chile, 1970

In July 1970, after John McCone, a director of ITT, telephoned Director Richard Helms, William Broe, chief of the division, met ITT's chairman, Harold Geneen, at the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel in Washington on July 16. Geneen "offered to assemble a substantial election fund" for Jorge Alessandri, "controlled and channeled through the C.I.A.," which Broe refused.¹⁰ On September 9 Broe cabled the Santiago station chief, Henry Hecksher, that "the only prospect with any chance of success whatsoever is a military golpe either before or immediately after Allende's assumption of power."¹¹ On September 29 he met Edward Gerrity of ITT to "explore the feasibility of possible actions to apply some economic pressure on Chile," and gave him a list of companies that could "participate."¹⁰ The division chief also sat on an interagency working group, with representatives from State, the NSC, and the Treasury, that coordinated overt economic measures toward Chile.⁹

After President Richard Nixon ordered the agency on September 15 to keep Salvador Allende from office, a task force was formed under the deputy director for plans, Thomas Karamessines. David Atlee Phillips ran it from day to day with Broe. The operation was Project FUBELT.¹² Broe and Phillips told the station on September 28 that "it is our task to create such a climate climaxing with a solid pretext that will force the military and the president to take some action in the desired direction," and ordered Hecksher "not, repeat not," to tell Ambassador Edward Korry of the "impending coup." General René Schneider was shot on October 22. The two then cabled that "absolute denial will be the order of the day even with Ambassador and other embassy colleagues."¹¹

After Allende took office, Richard Helms told the division that it might "exceed the authorized $700,000 and go up to, and even over, $1,000,000 provided it was warranted to keep" the newspaper El Mercurio going.¹¹ When the Senate's subcommittee on multinational corporations took testimony on ITT and Chile in March 1973, the text of the hearings was sent in a memorandum "for Chief, Western Hemisphere Division."¹³

Shackley and Phillips

The Foreign Relations of the United States volume on Chile for 1969 to 1973 lists Ted Shackley, previously station chief in Saigon, as chief of the division "from April 1972 until November 1973," and Phillips as chief "from June 1973."¹⁴ On September 11, 1973, as the coup was under way, Phillips sent Henry Kissinger a memorandum reporting that an officer of the group planning it had asked "if the U.S. government would come to the aid of the Chilean military if the situation became difficult." On October 3 he cabled Santiago that "Agency operational activities in Chile are now prime target for Congressional investigations" and that the agency "cannot assist Junta."¹¹ Phillips retired in 1975 as head of the division.¹⁵

DINA

The agency told Manuel Contreras, head of the Chilean secret police DINA, at the outset that it would not support activities of his service "which might be construed as 'internal political repression.'" According to its report to Congress of 2000, "by April 1975, intelligence reporting showed that Contreras was the principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Junta, but an interagency committee directed the CIA to continue its relationship with Contreras." A proposal for a paid relationship in May and June 1975 was overruled, but "given miscommunications in the timing of this exchange, a one-time payment was given to Contreras."¹⁶ The agency gave him a long lunch with the deputy director of central intelligence, Vernon Walters, and officers of the Western Hemisphere Division.¹¹

Miami

From 1961 to 1967 the agency used the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, to give cover to officers of the division stationed in the Miami area.¹⁷ On April 24, 1968, the chief of the JMWAVE station sent headquarters a dispatch on Wackenhut's purchase of the Reliable Reporting Service, which went to the chief of the division "as a matter of information."¹⁷